


restless hands and reckless hearts

by Kangoo



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Break Up, Depression, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, this is way too dark for a dream daddy story i'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: cassidy doesn't deal well with loneliness.
Relationships: Robert Small/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	restless hands and reckless hearts

**Author's Note:**

> huhhhh i don't know what to say about this
> 
> it's another two year old thing i found in my drafts, from when i played dream daddy and (as is usual for me) made the edgiest, most angsty oc possible
> 
> tw for: mention of alcoholism (cassidy drinks way too much), mention of past drug addiction, violence

Thing is, Robert may treat him like garbage, but it’s not like he deserves better. Cassidy knows what he’s worth, and it’s not a nice dinner date on the beach. Robert settling for him is the best he’ll ever do.

(The only man who ever thought he was worth anything more than a quick fuck died, and not a day passes without him thinking Amanda would better off if it had been the other way around.)

So he follows him home once, twice, thrice and doesn’t think about the way the air feels colder at five a.m when you’re still trying to put your shirt on and definitely not running away. He sneaks home with bites on his collarbones and scratch marks down his back like a teenager who’s been mauled by a rabid wolf and went back for more, and tells himself _this too shall pass_ like his therapist told him to, back when he was still seeing one.

He keeps the window open to remind himself it’s colder outside than it is inside.

His daughter is happy and going to a great college and the man who fucked him against a wall last night won’t even look him in the eyes when he calls their stupid thing off because Cassidy got too attached again. 

Saying that he has conflicting feelings about this party would be an understatement. 

But Cassidy is a father and he might not be all that great at it but he always does his best, so he smiles and smiles and plays with the lighter in his pocket with restless fingers.

They’re lively and loud: it helps, somewhat, to see Craig’s familiar grin and Mat’s flower crown, to hear Joseph’s calm voice in the chaos of his mind. They’re all terribly nice and it hurts ever so slightly each time he catches a glimpse of Robert in the corner of his eye, but he’s _fine_. He’s having fun, to a point.

It feels like he’s been holding his breath forever but it’s not what makes his chest burns and his eyes water. He feels sluggish, trapped, like he’s underwater and he can’t breach the surface.

The only way is down, now.

Craig is the last to leave, and he does so with a worried glance in his direction that he waves away, cheerful and terrified. Craid knew him in college, during the darkest period of his life, and that’s the look he always got whenever Cassidy did something so stupid even Kegstand Craig disapproved of it.

After his departure, there’s nothing and no one left but Cassidy and Amanda and the setting sun bleeding gold all over the city. 

“Ugh, cleaning.”

Old habits die hard and come back to life quicker than he expected. He says, “That’s a problem for tomorrow us,” and drags himself inside.

“That’s irresponsible,” Amanda grins. “I like it. Tomorrow me won’t, though.”

“Who cares.” Not a question. Cassidy ‘Rhetoric’ McGregor: that’s him. Then, “Ice cream?”

“Hell yes.”

No one can say no to ice cream

It’s quiet now that they’re alone: there’s the distant sound of the city, away from their suburban center, and birds chirping out of sight. Amanda is chattering about the party and the Emmas and college, all at once and too fast for him to hope to catch anything more than every other word so he just nods and hums at appropriate moments. 

He doesn’t remember a single moment of that damn party.

\--

Amanda gets up at 3 a.m for a glass of water. She almost missed him in the darkness, but the light of the streetlamps outside catches on his piercings for a second and she notices the mess that calls itself her father sprawled on their couch, wide awake and staring at the ceiling.

“You alright, pops?”

He sounds a little choked up when he says, “I‘m fine, Manda. Go back to sleep.”

He doesn’t look away from the ceiling. A notification pops up on his phone with a _ding, _quickly followed by three more, and he flinches, but that’s the only movement he makes. He doesn’t move to check what it’s about, or to turn his phone off. He just— stares.

Amanda walks back to her room without another word. 

\--

[Robert - 3:12 a.m]

hey

hey cassidy

hey

wanna hang out

in my bed

naked

?

\--

Cassidy holds it together until Amanda is off to college. It’s a good score. He’s a little proud of himself for that.

The first thing he does when he comes back from the 14-hours long trip is to grab the bottle of wine he bought for pasta night and forgot in the cupboard and drink straight from it. It’s pretty mild but he’s tired and sad and it’s the only alcohol in the house so it’ll do.

\--

[Craig - 5:25 p.m]

Hey bro! Join me @ the gym tomorrow?

[Cassidy - 6 p.m]

No can do bro

I’m exhausted

Sorry

[Craig - 6:02 p.m]

Oh yeah I forgot

Amanda’s all settled?

[Cassidy - 6:02 p.m]

Yup

[Craig - 6:03 p.m]

K, rest well bro

\--

[Mat - 4 p.m]

A small punk band I know is playing in town tonight

Wanna come?

[Cassidy - 4:02 p.m]

Idk

Might just stay home tonight

Thanks

\--

After that, it only gets darker, and blurrier.

It’s easy to go back to old bad habits if you’ve never gave them up so much as you put them on hold. God, he’s always been a mess, kept together by sheer spite and the knowledge that he won’t ever forgive himself if he fucks up his daughter. She’s the only good thing he’s ever brought into this world.

He alternates between cigarettes and alcohol to keep things interesting. The former he burns himself on, sometimes accidentally and sometimes not. The later he knocks back like he’s running from something and it burns not quite so differently when it goes down. 

He loses track at some point and wakes up on his floor or his couch or in a back alley somewhere he doesn’t know with a pounding headache and a few blurry memories of the night before. He gets blackouts more often than not: it’s better that way. He avoids Jim and Kim’s: it feels like running away but there’s no one to tell him that.

The nights he doesn’t feel like forgetting everything, he picks up fights.

One of those nights finds him in a back alley that feels vaguely familiar, like somewhere he passed out before, getting punched in the face by a guy a foot taller that might be an ex-con — but not for much longer if he keeps hitting like that.

Cassidy looks up and he’s grinning with blood in his hair from a nasty cut above his eyebrow, blood _everywhere _from his bleeding nose. He can only taste copper and cheap beer and smiling hurts from where the guy’s ring opened his lips but he feels more alive than ever.

His highest is always half an hour away from his lowest. By the end of the night he’ll probably look and feel like roadkill, but right now he’s alright. He already can’t feel his fingers anymore and his ribs have taken it upon themselves to be felt twice as much as usual to compensate. One or two of them might be bruised, but if it’s the case he’s a little (a lot) too drunk to notice.

Then he must pass out for a second, because he blinks and suddenly he’s against a wall and someone’s talking instead of hitting.

“What the hell, Cassidy?”

“Oh, hey Robert.” He’s still grinning and it hurts like hell. His vision is swimming. He grins harder. “I can’t feel my face.”

“Yeah, getting beaten up in an alley tends to do that to you. What did you do?”

“Dunno. Asked for it.” He chuckles, then winces when that pulls on his bruises. Shit, he’s felt better back when he was going through withdrawal.

A hand cradles his jaw, tilts his head. He squints when a street light shines right into his eyes, watches everything go blurry and soft through his eyelashes. Well, the blurry part was already there before, but the softness is new. Like the fingers on his skin, prodding new bruises with an odd sort of not-quite-gentleness, leaving a trail of warmth in their path.

“You look like shit.”

“Y’should see the other guy.” That reminds him- “Where… where did he go, an’way?”

Robert jerks his head to the side. Cassidy can just make out someone lying prone on the ground, in a puddle of something indescribable. “He sure did a number on you before that though. Must have pissed him off something fierce.”

“Haha, yeah.” He sighs, lets his eyes close all the way. Robert’s hand lingers on his face, thumb pressed lightly against his cheekbone. Maybe it’ll stay right there if he doesn’t bring attention to it.

But Robert’s smart about those things. About getting too close, literally or not. He draws back and Cassidy holds on to his smile like a lifeline, because there’s being pathetic and there’s being _desperate_ and he’s not about to remind Robert that right now he’s very much both of these.

“Come on. I have a first aid kit in my car.”

“Weren’t you g’na do- y’know. Alcohol?”

“_Do alcohol_. Right. But somehow I found a human wreck on my way, so-”

“Don’t be like that.” He opens his eyes, even though it feels like the most effort he’s ever done in his life, and waves his hand in a vague _shoo_ manner. “Go on. Get. ‘m fine.”

An aggravated sigh, before Robert grabs his arm and throws it around his shoulders. He hoists Cassidy up and starts walking, dragging him more than he’s carrying him. Cassidy feels hot from the tips of his fingers to his left hip, every point of contact radiating warmth. It’s a nice change from the cold.

God, he’s so cold.

A door opens and then he’s all but dropped on a car seat, only avoiding hitting his head on the top of the door by going completely lax as soon as no one’s holding him up. He slumps against the side of the seat while Robert goes to rummage around the front seat.

“I’m g’nna get blood all over your shit,” he whines.

“Don’t remind me. I’ll fax you the cleaning bill.”

He giggles. “You don’t have a fax.”

Robert comes back with a box in his hands, opens it to reveal the promised first aid kit. “You don’t know that.”

True. But- “_I _don’t have a fax.”

“That I can believe. Hold still.”

He smiles and stays very still, doesn’t even wince at the sting of disinfectant on his cuts. He’s had worse, but it never feels pleasant, doesn’t it? Only gets easier to bear.

For some definition of it, anyway.

He watches Robert through heavy lidded eyes as he works silently, cleaning every new wound and slapping a band-aid on any that needs it. He prods one of them for a moment longer, a deep gash from a broken bottle he didn’t see coming quickly enough.

“You’re lucky this doesn’t need stitches, because I draw the line at driving you to the ER at two a.m.”

“I could’ve stit- stich- stitched it up m’self.” God, words are hard. The alcohol’s hitting harder now, like it was just waiting for the right moment to remind him of the shots he was doing before the itch got worse and he had to find something else to keep his hands busy. 

Robert makes a dubious sound in the back of his throat. “Sure you could.”

“I swear!” He jerks back and rolls up his sleeve with clumsy fingers to reveal another wound. It’s a week old, still held closed with his own shitty stitches, running through old track marks his arm is a connect-the-dots game. “Look!”

Robert recoils, frowning down at him as he pushes his arm down. “That looks like it was done by a drunk rat on crack.”

He gives it a serious second of thought before nodding. “Kinda was,” he says, because Robert isn’t the first person to call him a rat and at this point the moniker is almost starting to sound affectionate. Even though thinking ‘Robert’ and ‘affectionate’ in the same sentence hurts him, a bit, in that ‘old bruise you can’t stop touching’ kind of way. “‘xcept for the crack thing, ‘cus I’m _clean_, baby. Did ya know I’m _clean_? Did I- I… did I tell ya? Clean as a fucking…. Baby out of the bath, man.”

There’s something in Robert’s eyes he doesn’t know what to make of, something weird and not really soft, but not like the hard edge when he told him they were done, either. Then it’s gone and he gets up, closes the first aid kit with a _snap_ and throws it on the front seat.

“You smell like a distillery. That’s not what I’d call _clean_.”

Cassidy leans back until he’s lying down across the backseat, staring through the window at the street light that blurs through his eyelashes. “‘s not the same though.”

Robert makes a soft sound. “No, I guess it isn’t.”

A moment passes. Then he’s being dragged up again, his legs pushes all the way inside as Robert wrestles a seatbelt around him. He tries to help for a bit but his hands always seem to get in the way, as they always do, and in the end he just tries to remain still in his confusion while Robert does his thing.

“What’re y’doing?”

“Getting you home.” Robert gets behind the wheel and turns the car on. “I’m not letting you walk all the way back to your house in that state.”

Cassidy thinks about objecting. Then, he thinks about nicer things, like the feeling of Robert’s hand on his cheek, his hot breath on the back of his neck, his nails clawing down his spine, stumbling out of this car together and through the door, into the bedroom and on the bed. Then, when the emptiness in his chest threatens to swallow him, he chokes out a, “That’s v’ry nice of you.”

“Please don’t throw up in my car.”

He doesn’t. He stays very quiet and very still for the drive back, slumped against the window, struggling to stay awake. He doesn’t manage it though because he wakes up with a start when the door opens, almost falls out if not for the seatbelt. 

Robert has to carry him inside — really carry him this time, because his legs gave up somewhere between the bar and his house. He almost leaves Cassidy on his front step and then decides against it, goes through his pockets for his keys before unlocking the door one handed.

He drops him on his couch, kind of rearranging his limbs so he’s lying on his side before he draws back. Cassidy’s too tired to protest, and the better part of him knows it wouldn’t go well, anyway. But he wants to all the same. Wants Robert to stay close and maybe brush his hair out of his face and tells him he’s gonna be okay, like Alex used to do when things got really bad.

Instead he tucks his face in his arms until he can’t see the empty space in his living room and mumbles, “Thanks.”

He’s asleep before he can feel the weight of the blanket dropping on him, or hear the sound of the door closing after Robert — softly, quietly, so as to not wake him.


End file.
